Pom Poms for Pomaria!
It was an apple-sweet moment for Persian expatriates Mohammed Esfahani and Roger Navabi last week, when their 30-floor Pomaria tower at Beach and Howe received the Urban Development Institutes' excellence award for highrise multi-family development. Pomaria means "apple garden" in Latin and the name could - but likely won't - be realized by appropriate plantings on the tower's 16th and 19th-floor "treed oases".
But that's not what saw Qualex-Landmark Group managing director Esfahani and president Navabi's project cited. The ace in the hole for the related-by-marriage pair, who merged their Landmark and Qualex firms and 37 years of local expertise in 2000, was meeting the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) silver standard. That partially derived from their building Canada's first purely residential project with home heating, cooling and domestic hot water produced wholly by geothermal exchange.
As well as saving 1,000 Mwh of energy annually, the systems' 56 100-metre boreholes save tenants money, mechanical engineer Navabi said. That's because Terasen Energy Services, which owns the $600,000 geothermal installation, charges a monthly $50-range premium that will not vary with gas or electricity price fluctuations.
The persistent upward climb of land prices means no Pomaria II is envisaged. But civil engineer Esfahani said it's "very likely" a 760-square-foot mixed-used project on Calgary's downtown 10th Avenue will be all geothermal. Still unnamed, the $500,000 project will include a Shangri La-style 60-floor hotel-residential tower and 40-floor neighbour, and street-level retail facilities.
The self-styled "boutique" developers will break ground on that project, designed by Rafii Architects, in 2009, when the third tower of a 560,000-square-foot Calgary development should be completed.
Land and construction costs in Alberta haven't languished either.
It cost $140 per square foot to build the Stella tower's now occupied 20 floors, Esfahani said. Under construction, the adjacent Nova's sold-out 28 floors will cost $220. And the pair estimate the 32-floor Luna will break ground next spring and come in at $300.
Although priced out of Vancouver for the time being, Esfahani and Navabi have June 2008 schedules for a start on their Luxe project beside Burnaby's Brentwood shopping centre. This $150 million job will entail 25- and 30-floor towers with 300,000 square feet of living space. With a geothermal system?
"We're not sure, yet," Navabi said.
What they are sure of is continuing to turn down opportunities in Victoria and Kelowna.
'We don't want to be spread too far around, "15-year condo-dweller Esfahani said, "because the quality is compromised."
That ethic also applies to their 2,000 square foot Melville-at-Thurlow office, where Qualex-Landmark's entire head office complement totals 10.
~ Malcolm Parry, Vancouver Sun
